ANALYSIS — Speaker Mike Johnson’s record-setting fundraising haul for the second quarter shows it’s time for a Beltway tradition to be laid to rest.
Every time Republicans are faced with electing a new speaker, there’s a fresh round of stories featuring party operatives and lobbyists fretting over the GOP’s fundraising future and casting doubt over prospective speakers’ ability to to fill the shoes of the departing incumbent.
“The House G.O.P Has Its Leader. But Can He Be a Rainmaker?” asked an October 2023 New York Times headline. “The willingness of House Republicans to trade a party rainmaker for a member who has raised less than some more junior colleagues has caused a deep sense of uncertainty at the highest levels of the conference, even as relieved lawmakers united behind Mr. Johnson to end weeks of political paralysis,” the story read.
“Some Republicans worry Kevin McCarthy’s ouster will weaken fundraising ahead of 2024 election,” blared an October 2023 headline on PBS News. “Now that he’s been ousted from the post after less than nine months, some in the GOP are wondering if anyone can take his place as a fundraising dynamo and party builder,” according to the story from The Associated Press.
“Nobody can raise money like him,” North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong told the AP at the time. “And no matter who is the next speaker of the House, none of them can do what Kevin McCarthy did.”
And yet in spite of the hand-wringing, House Republicans figured it out and held their majority last fall, and Johnson is developing into a fundraising machine. His team announced raising more than $50 million for the 2026 cycle thus far, along with an additional $60 million for aligned outside groups, Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network.
A familiar tale
All of this shouldn’t have been a surprise, because Republicans have been down this path many times before.
Back in 2007, the House GOP was in the minority, and there were questions as to whether a certain Ohio Republican could do the job.
“[John] Boehner Takes Up Money Challenge,” read a Roll Call headline from that July.
Eight years later, Boehner was a fundraising juggernaut who supposedly couldn’t be replaced. “McCarthy Raises Campaign Cash, but He’s No Boehner,” stated a 2015 Roll Call headline.
“[McCarthy] is one of the strongest campaign fundraisers in his conference, but he still can’t hold a candle to outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, say Republicans mulling McCarthy as Boehner’s successor,” according to the story. “Boehner’s fundraising operation was so extensive and successful — he donated tens of millions to his colleagues and candidates via multiple campaign committees and PACs — that his departure will leave a massive hole in Republican Party and GOP candidate coffers.”
Boehner ended up being replaced as speaker by Wisconsin Republican Paul D. Ryan, who, unsurprisingly, was a great fundraiser.
“The national network he’s amassed as a vice presidential candidate and from coordinating the national party’s spending in presidential elections give him advantages that even the highly prolific John Boehner didn’t enjoy,” explained a 2015 Politico article entitled, “GOP moneymen: Ryan a fundraising juggernaut.”
When Ryan announced his retirement in 2018, a familiar storyline emerged.
“Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s retirement announcement Wednesday sparked a public scramble for a successor to match his fundraising prowess and to serve as the House GOP’s political and policy chief in the age of President Donald Trump,” Roll Call reported that April. “Already, K Street players say in interviews that they fear Ryan’s announcement itself may hurt the party’s fundraising in the run-up to one of the party’s toughest campaign seasons in more than a decade.”
Republicans went on to lose their House majority in 2018 with Ryan at the helm, demonstrating that good fundraising sometimes isn’t enough to overcome a poor political environment. But Republicans won the chamber in the 2022 midterms, and, after a somewhat tortured process, the gavel went to McCarthy, who carved out his own moneymaking identity. In retrospect, GOP strategists describe McCarthy as an innovator for cultivating the joint fundraising committee structure that is becoming more prevalent in the campaign world.
Selling the majority
The current and previous Republican speakers all had unique strengths. Boehner was the consummate backslapper with deep relationships on K Street. Ryan was a national figure with policy prowess. McCarthy was a political animal with a decade of building relationships. And Johnson is armed with a combination of charm and substance that goes over well with donors, along with the important backing of Donald Trump. But the key common thread is that they all had the speaker title and people like to give money to the speaker.
So why is it hard to envision someone else raising as much money as the current speaker? Because they are not the speaker. But when they become the speaker, their fundraising capacity dramatically expands.
This narrative is likely to persist. Whenever enough House Republicans tire of Johnson, there’ll be stories about his successor’s inability to replicate his fundraising skills.
But Republicans will find someone who can raise money because, as one former GOP fundraiser reminded me, “No one is truly irreplaceable.”
Whether someone ascends to speaker with an existing donor infrastructure or inherits one, “it requires an immense amount of effort and time” to get to know donors,” another GOP fundraiser explained. “But once that happens, these people are committed to a cause and an end more than a person.”
“You’re still selling majorities.”
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